I don't use raid either. It's just a regular IDE spinning hard drive. Nothing special.

It's not a RAID. its just a 'regular' off the shelf spinning hard drive. I've not flipped any switched or anything. It's the only HD and should be the master.

It is not a raid AFAIK. It's just a standard spinning IDE harddrive.

Ok, let's try this...

First, while chrooted as above, is there an /etc/raidtab file? If so, post it's contents here...

Then the big question - how did this drive get configured for raid - clearly it is! Was it possibly pulled from a different machine? Can you supply a little history?

Ignoring all of that, to install lilo and boot, lets do this (still while chrooted):

This completely skirts the question of why it was raid, and what other possible complications there may be as a result of that, but this should make it boot non-raid.

This is the harddrive installed in the machine:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3160215A 160GB 7200 RPM 2MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 3.5" Hard Drive (Perpendicular Recording) Bare Drive

It's not very happy with me right now because of all of the hard restarts and powerdowns, but it booted from the hard drive.

---------- Post added 09-18-15 at 07:47 PM ----------

...because I forgot to unmount /dev/sda2 prior to restarts...

OK it finished checking itself and rebooted.Awesome. I have my system again. Thank you so much!

Great!

I am still curious how it ever got configured and was, presumably, booting as raid...?

But if it doesn't matter to you then it doesn't matter to me!

Be alert for any unexpected behaviors, but as the fstab was already set for the existing partitions you shouldn't see anything, at least once booted!

Glad to help!

I really have no idea. I am curious too but simply don't have enough experience to figure out how something like that would happen. I had no boot issues for years and then all of a sudden it thinks it's a RAID system...weird. Anyhow, I noticed that a lot of people have switched to GRUB(2) and I think I even saw you participating in an animated discussion about it. Should I consider GRUB(2)?

Did you do the original install, or someone else? Or I wonder if there is another lilo.conf in a different place or with a different name. But doesn't really matter now!

A few things to make yourself a note of, for future reference (while fresh in mind):

1. You can always boot into the install disc to troubleshoot your Slackware install - no real need for another boot disc.
2. Once booted to the installer, you can mount and chroot into your actual system to do things like configs - and reinstall lilo, or to recover data from a failing drive.
3. It would be easy to start by just reinstalling lilo, but a systematic check of drives and boot configs is always best - now you know why it didn't work and also know your drive is OK. Best confidence route!

As for grub - I am not a grub fan or user. As long as you are on a Slackware install with a machine that supports it, Lilo is MUCH easier to manage and troubleshoot, in my opinion! Just stick with what works!

I have a few additional comments I may try to add later but out of time for now!

Glad it works and good luck!

Noted. Thank you for all of your help!